Stuck On The Puzzle
by SLEAF
Summary: It saddens me that Dr. Arden was so poorly developed. Well, a character is rarely well developed in AHS, but still, he had such great potential. So I decided to write about him and his feelings towards Mary Eunice at the beginning of their relantionship a little. Nothing too deep though, just a simple one-shot.


Arthur Arden felt disgusted by every nun on the asylum. "Touched" by Jesus after some life crisis, entering the convent and felling absorbed of their sins after reading the Bible everyday and listening to the same old sermon about the kindness of God, and then the process ended when those women came to the asylum and saw the people here, and remembered that this is what the world is, and the poison on their tongues and the fierceness of their eyes was as clear as it was before they entered church to pretend they were pure. All the nuns had gone through it. The man, of course, didn't knew the life story of everyone, but just small pieces that they had let escape their toxic tongues was enough to see what was behind them all; a cliché drama of a drunker, a whore, a thief.

But the mediocrity of the nuns wasn't what disgusted Arden. He had accepted the human nature pretty soon in his life. The problems were their lies; Bible quotations, mainly. Even after it was so clear the dirty on the souls of the women on the asylum, they still tried to hide themselves behind the cross they used around their neck, a disguise of kindness. They still prayed, but their prayers had no feeling in them. They simply prayed out of habit. They preached the words of Jesus, but never cared to follow them that much. And that was what the doctor couldn't accept.

The very concept of someone truly kind and pure was completely stupid at this point in his life. He had met enough people to know that was all a well-made lie. Still, the very idea still touched something in his heart, even if he couldn't tell exactly what. Perhaps it was the faint hope that such sinless being could bring the old man what people would call "love", which Arden never felt or received. And whenever he saw the nuns faking purity, wisdom or whatever virtue was, he felt his fragile daydream more and more distant. Like they were constantly remembering him of the stupidity of the little hope he still held.

And when he met her, such daydream was almost forgotten.

It was a two weeks after he managed to greatly damage one of the pacients of the asylum mentally and phisically and still keep them alive for good. He was proud! After creating such a beast, Arden was more and more sure he would reach the goals he always dreamed with, and the doctor started spending more and more time locked away in the depths of the asylum.

"This is Sister Mary Eunice, Dr. Arden," the monsignor said, with that cheerful tone of voice "she's the assistant of Sister Jude." Though Arden admitted she was the first truly pretty nun on the asylum, he quickly assumed that he would dislike her as much as he disliked Sister Jude and all the others. If he had learned one thing from the nuns is that the ones who looked the purest were actually the ugliest. Those who seemed to hold innocence in their eyes were the most dirty ones. And Sister Mary Eunice seemed just _too_ innocent.

And by innocence, he didn't meant just her actions, clumsy, constantly making silly mistakes... He meant her voice, which holded such childish and strange glee daily, even in a destroyed place such as the asylum. He meant her eyes, always moving so quickly to one point to another, as if she still saw the world as a curious place that nedeed to be explored. And he meant her smile. Though a little difficult to explain, perhaps you could say she didn't smiled like most adults do when they face something pleasant. Whenever something good happened, she smiled like some stupid child who just got ice cream. And she never was ill-humored.

"Persistent one, is she?" Arden thought. Because even after two weeks, she didn't seemed like the other snakes who used the disguise of women of Jesus. Normally, after two weeks you would've seen her true colors, or at least you could see a hint of it. But the young girl seemed as pure and kind as she was when he first met her. "It's just a question of time until she stops pretending with such fervor", the man thought, without thinking twice about the subject. After all, at that point she wasn't important. Why would she be?

But oh, she started to matter.

It was a normal spring day, three weeks after she started living at the asylum. She was reading the Bible in the courtyard, while Arden was just making his way back from the forest with a big smile on his face. He managed to create two more beasts, and yes, they were beasts! Well, it's not like they were good for anything at all, but Arthur couldn't help but be happy for finally knowing what would happen if you pushed someone beyond the breaking point both phisically and mentally.

She saw him before he could see her, and the nun approached him rather quickly. With a cheerful smile she exposed her desire to talk to him about some of the pacients. Mary Eunice said that, but it was more than transparent that what she really wanted was to have a talk with the man. After all, she didn't really knew much about any of the pacients. She kept stuttering and saying things that didn't really make sense, and kept blushing too. Normally Arden would've thought that the conversation was a loss of time, but it was just so very obvious that she wanted to have a conversation with him because she wanted to be friends with the distant man that was her boss, that the doctor couldn't help but find it a little adorable. "How simple-minded."

After a little while of embarassing herself, she abruptly changed the subject to the flowers in the courtyard, and the nun certainly could keep a conversation about flowers better than about sick people. She clearly had some knowledge about them, and even though he normally wouldn't care about those, he found himself enjoying hearing her voice while she explained about plants. There was just some light on her eyes, and her gestures that had nothing to do with plants or flowers (she was literally just moving her hands around randomly), gave him something he hadn't had in a long time; true pleasure in talking with someone about things that were unimportant to him.

"It was peaceful", he tought.

After that episode, it became a bit of a habit. He would finish feeding the beasts, she would be reading the Bible, she would call him and talk about anything that came in mind. And before long, he realized that perhaps, she wasn't like the others. Perhaps, her soul was white and clean. As stupid as it seemed, some part of him wanted to believe that the kindness and purity on her eyes wasn't a lie.

It was the first time in his life that he ever stayed up late thinking about a woman, but he did. He wondered about her and her heart. He wondered about her mind and the puzzle that she apparently was, and about her truths and her lies, just to find himself remembering that old daydream.


End file.
